Earth's Vain Shadows
by Ammaren
Summary: Mattes was born under the Hunter, the Cat, and the Watchful Dog. Potential Mastiff spoilers. Partly Mastiff AU. Written for the Goldenlake Olympics 2012.


**Earth's Vain Shadows**

Summary: Mattes was born under the Hunter, the Cat, and the Watchful Dog. Potential Mastiff spoilers. Partly Mastiff AU. Written for the Goldenlake Olympics 2012. **  
**

* * *

When he was a lad, the _hestaka_ took a look at the stars. This was common, in the hills. They believed the ancestors spoke through the earth and the skies and the language of the spirits was written in the shining stars of the night sky.

He was born under the Hunter, the Cat, and the Watchful Dog.

The _hestaka_ read the stars the night he was born, and the night he became a man at thirteen. "Your path lies away from the hills," the _hestaka_ said. He added, later, troubled, "I know little of what the stars say. They are…difficult to read."

Even later, he would add, "You will live a long life. The ancestors have spoken."

At that time, Mattes had thought it a good thing.

* * *

He was born under the Hunter, the Cat, and the Watchful Dog.

The Hunter was obvious only in retrospect.

The Cat, he saw. The stars were all he had on those lonely nights as he dreamed of blood and slaughter and his family and relatives being murdered one by one. Renegade, they called the eastern hillmen, and enmity ran deeper than poison on Corus wells.

The streams ran rust-red with blood for months, he found out later.

He lived. He fled north, to Corus, with nothing more than a dagger, the clothes on his bag, and the earth on his boots, and a pocketful of dust. _Your path lies away from the hills_ , the _hestaka_ said. Hillmen were hillmen and when he woke up with the longing for home sharp and raw in his stomach, he pushed open the shutters of his room until the starlight flooded in and counted the constellations one by one.

The stars were the same in Corus, and here he was bound by a handful of dust from the hills long after he'd walked off the dust on his old boots and found a new pair.

He noticed on the night the Cat disappeared from the starry heavens and wondered if it was a sign.

He worked for a while as a cobbler. For all the cityfolk thought hillmen were barbarians, they'd known they were good trackers and made excellent boots. One day, he saw a man in black garments hobble a pickpocket and learned the cityfolk called their thief-catchers Dogs.

The next day, he left his lodgings and signed up at the nearest kennel.

* * *

He grew flowers, first in a planter along his windowsill, and then miniature ones when Hanna taught him the Yamani art of cultivating them.

In each of them, he scattered a little of the handful of hill dust.

So it was that flowers bloomed and as he dozed and dreamed at night, the coppery stink of blood vanished from his nostrils. Eventually, he dreamed of Yamani roses and gillyflowers and honeysuckle and islands he'd never seen but heard about.

One night, he woke up and realised the fierce, sharp longing for home was gone.

* * *

The training master and Sergeant of the Jane Street kennel was a short, fierce man by the name of Hakuri. He was Yamani as well, and his holds and throws were steel-hard and firm, with terrible burns scarring his grim face. Kennel rumour said he was a fugitive, exiled from the Yamani Islands on pain of death.

No Puppy ever dared ask what Hakuri had done.

Mattes smiled and lied about his past and told them he'd come to Corus seeking work as a cobbler. The stink of the hides still clung to his skin and clothing and eventually, even that was gone. He learned about pickpockets and thieves and flowersellers and patrols and chokeholds and throws at the same time as he learned how to manage crowds and to properly Dog a rusher.

He learned the names of some of his fellow Puppies: Josh, Mikhael, Tricia, Anisa, Kellan, and Relan who promptly left after the first week of training.

The night before they'd been assigned to Evening Watch on Jane Street, they'd stayed awake in their bunks all night, trading whispers and wondering where they'd get posted to. He asked for Prettybone. Their instructors laughed and assigned him to the Lower City.

After a few more weeks at Jane Street, Hakuri gave him over to Tamsin and Akela.

Akela was a tall, quiet man, with dark eyes and a strange sort of intensity. Tamsin was stocky and her eyes were fierce and most Rats knew about her left hook.

"So you're with us now," Akela said, and that was all he'd ever mentioned about the prospect of training another Puppy. Tamsin had been more distant and brusque, telling him to stay out of their way and not to try anything damnfooled stupid. Mattes hadn't learned until later that he'd been given the Senior Dogs with some of the worst luck in the kennel. Akela and Tamsin had buried four Puppies already; he'd been their fifth.

After their first week with their Dogs, he met his fellow Puppies once again. Josh, Mikhael, Anisa and Tricia had all been assigned to Jane Street. They knew the numbers. They all agreed right there and then they'd meet a year and a day for a good drink after they became proper Dogs.

They'd celebrate surviving their training.

* * *

Anisa had lovely green eyes and deft hands, wearing her dark brown hair neatly tied up. She was, Mattes had discovered, a good kisser and they'd had their share of fun even after she took the the transfer to Unicorn when it was offered.

Josh died, knifed in a brawl that had taken place in the Barrel's Bottom. The Barrel of Blood, the Dogs called it, and Akela shook his head when he'd heard about it but said nothing. Mattes found himself wondering if one of their four Puppies had died there.

Mikhael and Tricia came for their weekly drink off-duty. The space where Josh should have been was increasingly obvious, and one day Mattes returned to the kennel at the end of their shift with his Dogs only to find the dispirited silence that he'd remembered too vividly from Josh's death.

He recognised Hastler, one of Mikhael's Dogs. The imposing, broad-shouldered man sat with his head in his giant hands. Tricia was there. "It's Mikhael," she said, wiping her streaming eyes on the short sleeves of her uniform.

Mattes froze. He was the one who laughed, who took the risks. Mikhael was sober, serious, and always calm, the one who'd topped their training classes. But it was Mikhael, beneath the bloodied white sheet, and the healer said nothing as he drew it back.

They always said the dead looked peaceful. Tricia kept looking, even as Mattes tapped her shoulder.

Fear. He saw it, read it in the contorted expression on Mikhael's face. Anger. Pain.

He'd seen enough of death to know it wasn't peaceful. His family hadn't looked peaceful when they died. "Strangler's cord in the codpiece," Tamsin said, later, and Mattes knew that she was referring to Mikhael's death and the ugly purple bruises that surrounded his throat. "Mind that, Puppy."

The next day, Tricia didn't report for muster. "Go home, Puppy Tunstall," Hakuri said, shaking his head when he saw that only one of them had turned up for baton lessons. The other Dogs had paired off. Mattes flicked a glance over at his Dogs, but Tamsin was already nodding impatiently.

Instead, he went to her lodging house in Flash District. She was sitting on her mattress, staring at her Dog blacks and the white Puppy trim. He called her name. Shook her lightly. The shutters were closed, and he opened them a crack, letting a little sunshine wash into the room.

Eventually, she stared at him. He remembered she and Mikhael had been close. Maybe closer than he thought. "Mattes," she said.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get something to eat."

A week later, he learned that Tricia had taken the Black God's option.

And then there was only one Puppy left in the Jane Street kennel.

* * *

It wasn't supposed to be them.

It was supposed to be him. He felt Dogs' eyes straying speculatively to him as the weeks wore past and still he returned each morning at muster. That Akela and Tamsin were jinxed was common kennel knowledge; the details of the jinx was the subject of much debate and rumour. Some suggested Tamsin had seriously angered a Palace mage, others that it was Akela who had done the crossing here.

Mattes went to the funerals, dressed in his best blacks and put a little polish on his boots and spoke at Tricia's. He was the only one left to do it.

He planted three new Yamani roses in his lodgings that day. He watered them, and watched over them.

* * *

A year later, he sat alone at the table in the Mantel and Pullet, Puppy trim severed from his blacks and keenly felt the emptiness.

"Here's to you," he said aloud, and drank. To absent friends.

* * *

Asif Hamiddi was from Barzun, and they made an odd pair, the two of them. Dogs were fair game for kennel rumour, or maybe Puppies just didn't get to hear what the Dogs really thought of them. He'd heard of Asif; a fair number of Rats hobbled to his name, and a Dog three years before Mattes. Still green, as far as the other Dogs were concerned.

"Mattes Tunstall," Asif said, with a disarming grin. His brown eyes were bright and cheerful. He reached out a hand and Mattes shook it. "I've heard about you. Asif Hamiddi. Know where we've been assigned to?"

"Westberk street," Mattes said. There was something warm and open about Asif's demeanour that seemed strange in Jane Street where Lower City work had put a hard, sharp edge onto most Dogs. He wondered about himself.

Asif let out a low whistle. "Well," he said, after a while, and Mattes could pick up the hint of an accent in his Common. Even though Asif's voice was slow and deliberate, he could tell there were points when Asif's speech was halting. He knew them; he had the problems with his Common. "The edge of the Cesspool. Deep to our knees in sewer muck and only our first time on shift."

Mattes shrugged. Akela and Tamsin had been Senior Dogs, and he'd seen more than his fair share of the Cesspool. "The edge of the Cesspool," he said thoughtfully, "'Least it doesn't include the Barrel."

Asif winced at that. "You were the Puppy," he said, and a little of that openness had fled. "That batch of Puppies."

"Yes."

Asif shook his head. "A waste," he said simply. "They should close the Barrel. Too many Puppies and seasoned Dogs…" He shrugged, gestured with his expansive hands. " _Narik ta,_ " he said. "So, then. You are ready?"

"Are you?"

Asif's eyes crinkled. He slapped Mattes around the back. "Come on then, Guardsman Tunstall. Time to get your feet soaked in piss."

* * *

Kennel word told Mattes soon enough that Asif's last partner had died while trying to stop a brawl in the Barrel. That said enough for Mattes about Asif's attitude towards the Barrel, and when he'd thought of it, he remembered they'd had several funerals with Mikhael's.

It was strange to think back on the day and to realise, as they'd been taught, that memory was a strange thing. He practiced his memory exercises daily but the day in his mind was always overcast, Tricia always silent by the gravestone. There was only one grave he'd thought about, back then.

Asif never spoke about why he left Barzun. In the same way, he never asked why Mattes had left the hill country. Eventually, the kennel whispered reached Mattes' years: he was from a renegade tribe of hillmen, he'd left because he'd killed a man, because of trouble over a woman, he'd left because he'd wanted to be a cobbler in Corus…

Asif, they said, had been cast out by his tribesmen. A Bazhir without a tribe to claim him was lost, a drifter. He had nowhere to go and he'd headed up to Corus and taken any job he could find.

Mattes put little stock in kennel rumour. Sometimes, Asif would speak in the Bazhir tongue. Snatches of words that eluded him in Common, proverbs.

They'd enough in common. Mattes knew how it was to feel so strangely disconnected in this bustling city of Tortallan cityfolk and he spoke Hurdik. It did not matter that their Common was accented. They did not always need words. In a strange way, in Asif's eyes, he saw the same pain of exile that sometimes returned like a stranger unasked for, like an old friend.

He knew, and he never asked.

* * *

He remembered the day when Asif said, "Mattes, my friend."

* * *

Five years later, Asif died. The stupidest of reasons, Mattes thought. Breaking up gang fights was always a risky business but the neighbourhood had gotten involved. It hadn't been a knife or a blackjack or a rusher's blade but a roofing tile to the head.

Asif died, choking on his own blood. He never woke up.

There was another funeral, another set of speeches, another burial. The pigeons flapped their wings and flew away. One alighted on his shoulder for a short while, left a scattering of grey fathers.

Fool he, he pocketed them.

There was a Dog standing with Nyler Jewel and Esthe Kilven. Dark haired, brown-eyed and a small beak of a nose. He thought he remembered her being assigned to them as a Puppy. She stared back at him, until Mattes finally looked away.

He wondered what kennel rumour was going to say about him. Mattes the Survivor. The Dog with a knack for getting the people around him killed.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. "Come," Tamsin said gruffly, and steered him away to the Mantel and Pullet for lunch.

* * *

His next partner was Shai, with pale hair and paler eyes. Word was that she wasn't born on the right side of the blanket, and her mother had been noble.

They lost their first Puppy, and were never assigned a second one. Shai sang the Puppy's Lullaby in a clear soprano and Mattes joined in.

 _Narik ta?_ Asif would have asked. So, then?

It was a Bazhir expression never completely translatable, he'd said, once. It conveyed a mixture of haplessness, resignation, and even fatalism. A sense that it was time to move on, to decide on what to do next.

The next year, Shai left the Dogs. Mattes didn't ask any questions.

* * *

Hakuri gave him Clary Goodwin as a partner. A sharp mot with a sharper tongue and the steel to do whatever they had to do, gods all bless her. Fourteen years they walked the streets together, and where the other pairs faltered, they seemed invincible.

Tamsin lost an eye, and then her life. Akela grew more distant, and finally accepted a promotion to Watch Sergeant in Prettybone. He'd never heard from Anisa again, and it'd been a brief fling in any case. Nyler Jewel lost Esthe and was reassigned to Osgyth Yoav. Hakuri himself was promoted to Watch Commander of Flash District and left a space which Kebibi Ahuda stepped in to fill.

The faces at the Mantel and Pullet changed as Dogs turned in their blacks and died and bled out on the streets. He became a Senior Dog and shifted his lodgings to Patten District. He planted more Yamani roses, and counted them carefully.

Clary became a corporal, and then turned down a promotion to Sergeant. She was the only constant, Mattes thought, as Dogs came and went and all the Senior Dogs could talk about was the someday they'd turn in their blacks and retire because they were too old to walk the streets.

Together, they hobbled some of the worst that the Lower City had to offer, and for a long time, Mattes thought that they would turn in their blacks together. And then? He had no idea. He'd never had one.

Then along came their first Puppy, a mot with cold blue eyes and a talking black cat and then Mattes knew what the _hestaka_ had spoken of.

* * *

Clary left the street for Ahuda's desk, after a Hunt in Port Caynn and a missing piece of her ear. There was something missing in her gaze, now, and though her tongue was sharp as ever, Mattes sat back in his chair, stretching carefully as his legs ached and wondered how much longer.

* * *

He was born under the Hunter, the Cat, and the Watchful Dog.

"You will live a long life," the _hestaka_ said, reading the stars.

As the cold seeped into his lungs, filling them with fluid, as his broken legs sent sharp splinters of pain into his aching brain, Mattes saw them again as he exhaled.

The last of his handful of dust spilling out onto the ground. Just a trickle. He'd never needed to grow a rose for Clary or for Beka, or even Sabine. He thanked the gods for that.

And the skies. He counted the stars, named them in his head. He was born under the Hunter, the Cat, and the Watchful Dog. He had lived a long enough life. _Narik ta?_

He turned over, every inch a struggle that threatened to turn his muscles to water. He wanted to die with the sight of home in his eyes.


End file.
